We made many memories during our recent boutique (limited to 6) workshop in Amalfi, Italy. The coastal towns of Amalfi and Positano (famous for making world class ceramics, paper and limoncello), the international concert series in Ravello, the sunny Isle of Capri, the Greek ruins of Paestum, and the ruins of Pompeii once buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius are a few of the places we visited. Of course, the food and wine was fantastic!

You can enjoy my images of from our recent adventure on Google+. They’re an assortment of spontaneous sketches, rather than a collection of fully finished pieces that develop a cohesive theme. They’re not likely to become a body of work, but a few of them will influence other bodies of work.

If you’d like to use HDR techniques for your mobile photographs you’ve got choices. Moving from simple and limited to more complex and robust, consider these three: first, the iPhone Camera app’s built in HDR function; second, the app Pro HDR; and third the app TrueHDR. I use all three, moving from one to another as the contrast of the scene increases.

The strength of HDR renderings and the artifacts they tend to produce can be varied to suit individual tastes. Regardless of whether you favor a light touch or a heavy hand, if you photograph, with or without a smart phone, sooner or later you’ll need HDR. It’s an essential technique …

“No one needs to learn to “think outside the box” more than photographers. The frame, literally a box, is often our greatest ally. Learning to see photographically is in part learning to see within the limits of this box and use them creatively. But there are times when this limits our vision unnecessarily. Once we’ve learned to see within the box, we then need to learn to see outside the box — and start extending the frame to perfect select compositions. There are three ways to do this; crop (after exposure), sweep (make extended format exposures in camera), or stitch (blend separate exposures together); or combine all three. Extending format techniques aren’t just for panoramic image formats. They can be used to give you the extra inch that can make all the difference in the world for your compositions.

Stitching has multiple functions, making it an essential skill for today’s photographer. Regardless of whether you use panoramic aspect ratios, the practice of extending format through photo merges can help you perfect many compositions in ways that are often challenging and in some cases impossible to do otherwise. It can help you choose a better angle of view without eliminating essential information or include essential information when you either can’t or don’t have time to change angle of view. When this skill becomes second nature, you’ll find that you’ve become visually more versatile, flexible, productive, and accomplished. Extended format techniques offer new ways of seeing.”

Find out about the iPhone apps that will help you make the best panoramic images …

Apple recently shipped new iPhones (5S and 5C) and a new mobile operating system (iOS7).

If you’re an “iphonographer” should you upgrade? If you’re using the iPhone 5, for most it’s probably not a big enough upgrade (lower noise, new lens, new flash) to justify the cost. If you’re using an earlier model it is a good time to upgrade (and you’ll want the 5s); you’ll get substantially better capture quality.

Whether you upgrade your iPhone or not your photography will benefit from upgrading to iOS7 with its 200 new features and improvements.

Here’s a roundup of useful resources for iPhone 5S and iOS7 to help you make the transition.

I love the spontaneity inherent in smart phone photography. Having a cell phone camera constantly at your side changes the way you see the world. You become more aware of the world around you, taking notice of people, places, things and events that might pass you by unconsidered. You tune in – creatively. If you want to live a more considered life I highly recommend trying cell phone photography. You can quickly and easily capture the moments in between moments. Smartl phone photography offers an invitation to celebrate the ‘smaller’ events in between the ‘larger’ events of your life. There may be a little Zen spirit at work here sometimes it is first shot best shot.

These accumulated moments add up. Over time the products of these stolen moments build something larger. Unintended bodies of work may materialize unexpectedly. The constant pull of brief episodes of creativity may even prepare the way for extended bursts of creativity.

Exercising creativity is like exercising a muscle; the more you practice the stronger you get.

Find more than a dozen images all made in the space of 45 minutes spent wandering the decks of the Russian research vessel Akademik Sergey Vavilov during an arctic cruise from Svalbard to Greenland and Iceland.

Every year I travel with my son and wife to visit her family in Italy. In between moments at the beach, visits to family members houses, and long meals I steal a moment here and there to make photographs, sometimes lagging behind, sometimes rushing ahead, other times ducking around a corner. The environment is very different from the ones I work in professionally. I use this as an opportunity to explore other interests. I find periodically getting out of my comfort zone and exploring other subjects in other environments helps me be a more versatile artistically. The things I learn along the way can later be transposed to my professional work.

How does play inform your image-making?

Here’s a selection of recent images of Italian walls, doors, and windows.

How many times have you wished you could quickly straighten lines in an image that have been distorted by perspective? Being able to control perspective is particularly important for architectural photography and it can be used to make stronger compositions in all images.

How many times have you wished you could control the aspect ratio of an image? Making an image more horizontal, square, or vertical or changing an image from one to another can be a powerful tool for creating more expressive images.

When you want to make a mobile phone image smaller quickly, launch iResize. Why would you want to change the size of an image? There are so many reasons; to email it, to post it online, and/or to share it in social networks are just a few. And with smart phone images growing in size every year, the need to do this is only increasing.

iResize can also change the proportion of an image from horizontal to panoramic, square, or even vertical.

iResize is one of those apps that you can learn instantly and is so easy to use that you’ll quickly overlook how often you use it, which is exactly what makes a go to app.